The Entire History of Scotch Whisky in 29 Minutes

So how did we get this? Scotch whisky is the world-renowned premium drink. So let me tell you about how this premium elixir started. This is the brief history, the science, the struggle and crazy story of Scotch. A country that has given its name unchallengeably to a product that is known and accepted in every corner of the world. Scotch whisky is the true product of Scotland. Applying the techniques of monks who created this quintessentially Greek elixir in the 14th century. Make an expensive type of Scotch called single malt. To the ends of the earth. The whole lifeblood of this island and everybody on it. So the drama is there as the drink of choice. Taste of heaven in a glass. So back around 500 AD Scotland was a savagely beautiful place and the highlanders used to make this sort of low alcohol content primitive version of beer. But what even is alcohol? Well basically in a nutshell the yeast eats sugar and then poops out alcohol. Poops it out. That's what you drink every time you're having whisky. It's yeast poop. So what's that got to do with whisky though? Well the things with natural fermentation, there's a cap on its ABV. You see historically beers have been pretty weak around two to three and wine around seven to nine percent. And even with like modern super saiyan yeast you still can only really get to about 16% alcohol. The reason for that is because the yeast that's converting the sugar to alcohol basically it's trying to poison the bacteria because that's all it cares about. But after a certain amount of time ends up poisoning itself. So the way around this to get the ABV up for alcohol makers is distillation. And people don't realize how relatively recent distillation actually is and it's an easy concept. So basically what you're doing is you're boiling alcohol and water but the thing is with alcohol it has a lower boiling point. So basically when you boil it the alcohol will boil first. You want to capture that vapor and convert that back to a liquid and then you have a higher ABV product or alcohol by volume product. So this technology was probably discovered in different cultures at different times but the earliest evidence we have is the Akkadian tablets in ancient Mesopotamia. And basically on these tablets I've talked about this ancient way of making perfume. But it's also been suggested it started in China and then it moved through the Middle East and then moved into Europe to the where they used it for medicines and they also used it for poisons. It's nothing. So 1000 years later in the 14th century Europe was just really into rediscovering all these inventions and science from the ancient Greek world. And one of these inventions they rediscovered was called aqua vitae which literally means in Latin water of life. You know by the YouTube channel aqua vitae who's got a YouTube channel about whiskey now you know where that word comes from. But to talk about how Scotland and Ireland started making whiskey though we need to talk about the monks. So these monks were pretty well educated and well traveled and it's thought while they were out traveling they saw all these cool perfumes being like distilled in copper and around the 15th century if not earlier they brought back all this cool technology to make pot stills but not for making perfume though for drinking. Oh look at that gorgeous. Now while I'm having a tram I just want to say thanks to Squarespace for making this video possible. I've been using Squarespace for over five years there's quite a few reasons for this. First one is you get your own domain when you set up a website. Fantastic. Second one is it's beautiful you know you don't need a code background you don't need a design background easiest thing up is like an Instagram page it's that easy. Thirdly you can set up your own store and sell things online on your website and I actually do this myself I sell prints online through my website philipgalfotography.com where people can buy big digital prints of mine and it works wonderfully. So thanks Squarespace for making this video possible and back to the show. So the Irish Banks brought this technology back to Ireland and also went to Scotland and Scotland used this distillation technique on their primitive Highland beer and so basically in simple terms boiled beer is malt whiskey and the word they used for it at the time is hushkabar. Hushkabar when it's abbreviated became whiskey and that's where we got the word whiskey. So the information we know of them making this distilled beer in Britain comes from the Canterbury Tales written by a guy called Geoffrey Chaucer around 1378 to 1400 and one of these tales called the Yeoman's Tale it's about these two alchemists and they're making this crazy list of ingredients and just whipping all these things up and it lists these ingredients and it says the olive tart here almond glass boom and wart and the key word is wart. Wart being the liquid that's extracted from the mashing process when you're making beer and then they're boiling this so they were making an old type of whiskey. But wait what about official evidence of making whiskey and not just from this poem? Well that comes from a very famous record called the Exchequer Rolls which is a tax record by this monk guy John Friar in 1494. It basically is about the king asking him to make him lots of whiskey because you know why not the king wanted whiskey. Basically translated from Latin it says to John Corr by order of the king to make aqua vitae eight bowls of malt. So we don't really know who he was where he was from but we do know that he was no novice like eight bowls of mulch or grain is over half a ton of mulch so it's a lot of whiskey he's making a lot of whiskey. Now distilling had certainly gone on in Scotland before this point especially at western islands like Islay but this was the first written record and as we're talking about this time let's talk about the king who came to the throne in 1488 King James IV. So King James was a huge fan of whiskey and in 1493 he traveled out west into Islay and he most likely witnessed the distilling that was going on there and he's probably offered the drink too and then he went to Inverness in 1506 and he brought back a cartload of scotch with him and then he promoted it and he talked about it and started to become all the rage and people started to become aware of this great drink that was being made in Scotland. After the reformation a lot of the monasteries collapsed and then the art of distillation was spread into local communities by the monks. To make whiskey you need a lot of water and barley which made Scotland very ideal although back then it was even sometimes made with oats and often it was combined with other ingredients like milk and fruit. It was used in everyday life in Scotland as a stimulant and as a medicine and you can kind of see why there were pandemics and plagues and the constant Scottish harsh cold winters. Also as well it wasn't done in like these big distilleries we know of today it was done on a very small scale and usually in private. However because the equipment was pretty average and it wasn't really done super professionally it meant that the whiskey was pretty bad and often potent and sometimes deadly and also as well there wasn't much evidence that was actually aged in wood so it was pretty much this rough intense new make moonshine. But hold on we can't talk about scotch until we talk about tax. Scotch has a long and complicated history with tax. So whiskey was getting really popular and the government was like you know what we should tax the out of whiskey and they did. So in 1644 the first excise tax was brought in by Charles the first to help fund the civil war against Oliver Cromwell and how did they do that? Well you guessed it, tax. After the union between England and Scotland they wanted to keep the Scots happy with the new union so basically they taxed Scots half the rate of England but then six years later after the war of succession then parliament then voted to extend the tax to the Scots and even though 45 members of parliament were Scots and they really voted against it which shows you how much they really didn't want this tax and yeah this was pretty unpopular in Scotland and eventually this led to the 1725 tax riots. So the Scots were pretty fed up with this English tax on their malt and barley and they wanted to overturn it so basically they started rioting in 1725 in Hamilton and that spread throughout the country. One of the fiercest process was in Glasgow where basically they drove the military out and they destroyed the house of this guy Daniel Campbell who was the representative in parliament who also voted for the tax. So don't mess with Scotland and their whiskey. Stay out of my territory. As you can imagine this unpopular tax generated a huge black market of smuggling and distilling. We even had church ministers helping transport the stuff and there were secret codes between smugglers and the villagers. Illicit distillation was widespread and speaking of illicit distillation, that's what this Glenlivet 12 illicit distill pays homage to is when our small-scale distilleries were making illicit stills. This is great whiskey by the way, bottled at 48%. I'm not sure, I think this might just be a limited edition but I hope not because having a whiskey at this strength for you whiskey geeks out there, it's very good. I really enjoy this whiskey, I hope they keep making it, it's great. Anyway, this illicit distillation also explained why so many distilleries in such remote places across Scotland, like way up in the highlands and all these little islands everywhere, because they're trying to avoid the tax man. Question was, was there any legal whiskey? So let's talk about the lowlands and their weird So Scotland was divided up in terms of tax. If you're in the lowlands, you could sell to England and you're taxed at one rate. If you're in the highlands, you couldn't sell to England and you're taxed at a different rate. And this led to this strange system and it didn't allow for a free market where people take advantage of the loopholes of the different tax systems in different parts of Scotland. In the lowlands especially, because of the high taxes, they're almost encouraged to find this tax loophole. So basically the malt tax assumed that they would distill once a day, but they kind of reinvented their stills. You'd basically be able to distill 10 to 20 times a day and some of them even more than that. So the lowlands were just producing more and more spirit. And really it led to this kind of flood of awful kind of cheap whiskey for the lowlands. However, in the highlands, it sort of was the opposite. They couldn't really pay this tax and so they just ignored it and kept doing illicit whiskey. And ironically, because they didn't have to follow these strict laws by the government, they started to make better whiskey because they could really focus on taking time with their whiskey and producing really good spirit. And it actually became really popular. So the contrast between lowland and highland whiskey was really evident when this guy called Sir Walter Scott chose to give the king illicit highland whiskey for a toast. And after the king had had this highland whiskey, he frequently demanded it and he demanded that he have nothing else but highland Glenlivet whiskey. This drink, I like it. I know it's great, right? Another! And Elizabeth Grant recorded these events in her memoirs of a highland lady. Lord Cunningham, the Chamberlain was looking everywhere for pure Glenlivet whiskey. The king drank nothing else. It was not to be had out of the highlands. So this further didn't help the sort of impression that lowland distilleries were kind of less quality and led to more people just buying the illicit whiskey from the highlands. So after the Battle of Waterloo and the Napoleonic Wars, they had no longer this need for this pressing tax to raise funds for these wars. And also it's pretty clear that 1707 tax just wasn't really working because a lot of distillers were doing it illegally, which meant that they actually weren't actually making any revenue from the tax. So they decided to rewrite it. So then in 1816, they cut taxes by a third. But then in 1823, they went even further, where they created pretty much the most important act, which basically created Scotch whiskey as we know it today. So Parliament then passed the Excise Act of 1823, also known as the Wash Act. So taxes were again decreased and most restrictions were lifted for the export and sale of whiskey for licensed distilleries. The really interesting thing is that suddenly there was a commercial incentive for people to start growing more barley to start new distilleries, especially since tax now was on the final product rather than on the barley. And as a result of all these new businesses, the government could finally have a reliable taxable income. And there's a significant number of new licensed distilleries and many people think this is actually where Scotch whiskey really started. It was a fundamental redrawing of what whiskey is, what whiskey tastes like and what whiskey would become. And this is because the act was super specific, an incredible detail of basically how you should make your whiskey and how to really run your entire distillery. However, it would make many of the smaller distillers redundant. And that was because before this, farmers would just harvest their crop, make their whiskey and then just sell it. And, you know, done. Hopefully it was good. And if it was different batch to batch, it just didn't really matter. And that's where the merchants got involved. And that's when the taste, the quality and the consistency became really important because they wanted to know that their product was reliable. If someone liked a certain whiskey that they could sell it again and it would be the same. And that's when, by the 1850s and 1860s, we saw a bunch of new business-led distilleries that sort of moved from a farm-led industry to a business-led industry. The entry level rose. People saw the opportunity. It was the people with capital. It was the investors who could understand the act and then make whiskey that would please the merchants. So Glenlivet is probably the most well-known example. And George Smith, who was the owner, was encouraged by the Duke of Gordon, who was actually the landlord, but also in Parliament, to get a license, especially after Glenlivet had been making illicit stale whiskey. And they did. And after that, a lot of distilleries followed suit. So not only was it good for the highlands, it was good for the lowlands. And that was because they got rid of all the random lines and tax weird stuff. And so then the lowland distilleries could actually finally start making whiskey that people actually liked, and also in a legal fashion. And these lowland distilleries even began to promote themselves as making Highland-style whiskey. There was this one Victorian writer in 1829 who wrote about the Bankhead distillery, where they said, The whiskey is now made on North Highland principles. And although a lowland distillery, the quality of the spirit appears to be of the most pronounced and excellent Highland-style of whiskey. But this is where you start to see the split between 100% single malt distilleries, which were in the lowlands, highlands and islands, and the grain distilleries that were going to come along. Enter the invention that changed it all. And although whiskey was getting pretty popular at the time, it was still pretty inconsistent. Until this guy came along called Aeneas Coffey, who invented the continuous still, which allowed continuous distillation rather than batch distillation, which is super efficient, which means you can make whiskey really quickly, and it'd be very consistent. And Scotland soon embraced this faster, cheaper way of making whiskey. And demand rose. And this is where we saw the rise of blended whiskey. It was the rise of some of the big names in blended whiskey that we know to this day. And they basically took advantage of the new technology and the new laws. And they were the big names like Johnny Walker, James Chivas and Tommy Dewar. So 50 years later, the market for Scotch was firmly established. But Scotch's success was also helped with a little bit of luck. And this is where things get interesting. So starting in 1860 until about the 1890s, the Phylloxera beetle basically feasted on all the vineyards of France, and it kind of just wiped out all these vineyards. And it hit the wine industry hard, and particularly the brandy industry, which is distilled wine in a premium spirit of choice for many in Europe. And because brandy just became so hard to find across Europe, people started turning to Scotch as their new sort of premium spirit of choice. And by the time the French industry actually recovered, Scotch had already replaced brandy as a preferred spirit of choice. So people refer to the 1890s as the era of the whiskey boom. And a lot of its success was because of blended whiskey. And as a result, it also lifted up the malt whiskey distilleries. There were 33 new distilleries in the 1890s, and 21 of them were just in Speyside. Like this one, the Downey, which it says Highland, but actually is in Speyside. When you're in Speyside, they can actually choose what they want to put on the label, Highland or Speyside, side note. And yeah, this is where Speyside really became a hub of whiskey distilleries. And most of those distilleries are still around today, the ones that started then. And in 1919, the U.S. made alcohol illegal. And this was kind of a double-edged sword. Some distilleries kind of didn't do so well out of it, and some did really well of it because the mobsters couldn't get enough of it, and they were just smuggling in all this whiskey. What about wood maturation? When did that start? Well, a lot of the inspiration comes from rum, where it's kind of commonplace to age your rum for 10 years from like the 1820s, and also in cognac as well. But it wasn't really commonplace with whiskey until World War I. For sort of a weird, unlikely reason, because of a guy who was actually totally against alcohol, the chief financial minister at the time, David George, was super concerned about the problems caused by alcohol. Particularly during wartime, he argued that drinking was doing more harm than all the German submarines combined. Whoa. But if you've ever met a British person and their love for the pub, you'll know this is going to kind of be a hard sell, and compromises were made. So basically, Young Spirit, or Moonshine, or like this bottle, which is a Newmake, it's an Australian whiskey, and you can see that it's kind of clear, like gin or vodka. And that's what whiskey's like before it's aged in wood for a certain amount of years. And basically, they saw Newmake as kind of the key to drunkenness. So compromises were made, and any whiskey that was aged less than three years were banned under the Immature Spirits Act of 1915. So this did a couple of interesting things to the Scotch whiskey industry. First of all, it meant that a lot of the distilleries that were producing Young and Immature Spirit had to shut down. So there was about 130 whiskey distilleries before the war, and then only a handful afterwards. And especially in the Lowland and Campbelltown regions, which I talk about in my Whiskey Regions video, heaps of them shut down. And neither of these regions have come close to having as many distilleries as they used to have back then. Campbelltown had produced too much whiskey, much of it low in quality, at a time when consumption levels were falling. What's more, natural resources were running low, and the railways that helped roll Highland and Speyside whiskey out to the markets never arrived here. But secondly, this actually helped Scotch cement itself as a premium product. Aged whiskey was more expensive, it was more palatable, and people were actually seeking out the drink for the smell and taste, and not just to get drunk. And so what Lloyd George succeeded in doing was rescuing the whiskey industry from itself. The second golden era was in the 50s and 60s. In Europe and the US it was booming, and it was seen as the drink of the free world. And in the UK, distilleries doubled capacity, and output was increased fivefold. It was also where Scotch started to be sold as individual brands. You know, blends were still super popular, but people started to seek out the individual character, the individual distillery known as single malts. And it was really started with Glenn Fittick, who opened his visitor centre in 1969, where people could go visit the individual distillery. And this was soon followed by, you know, Glenn Livert, Glenmorangie, and the Macallan. Cue bust number two. So within the 1970s and 1980s, there was the perfect storm for a bust within the whiskey industry. Oversupply, and low demand. So first of all, there was demand, and the world was rapidly slipping into a recession. There were economic problems. Inflation peaked at 25% in the UK annually. The price of oil was going up, which meant the price of whiskey was going up. And there were strikes. And also as well, whiskey just kind of went out of fashion. So amongst the young, cocktails becoming super popular, and whiskey was sort of started to be seen as an old man's drink. And so, white rum and vodka were sort of eventually expected to take over the world, leaving whiskey behind. And that brings us to supply. So there's just an oversupply of whiskey. There was four times as much whiskey in bonds in the 1980s than there was in the 1960s. And the press called it the whiskey lock, based off the wine lake in France. Sort of alluding to the fact there's just so much whiskey in barrels, in warehouses, not being drunk. And then there were the casualties. 29 distilleries closed over this time period. And many quite famous distilleries like the Brewer, and now the super sought after Port Allen, all closed, many demolished, and many to never make whiskey again. But one upside of this was for the consumer. It means that there are a lot of whiskeys out there to buy. And it also means there's a lot more available older whiskeys to buy, which then in turn pushed up the expected norm of what an age should be on a whiskey. Which is part of the reason why today, the average age, sort of when a distillery releases an official bottling, is around a 10 year old. It means that whiskey was expected to be aged for at least a decade. And that brings us to the biggest boom yet. And today, single malt is now the strongest growth category of any whiskey. And now production can't keep up with demand. Closed distilleries are being rebuilt. New distilleries are being started. And despite all the crashes and challenges, and through intense determination, skill, and perseverance, the whiskey industry has always revived itself. And now has never been better for single malt Scotch whiskey. For a worldwide luxury market that's more than doubled in size in the last decade. It's fantastic. It's a golden period. Scotch whiskey has become a record-breaking export for the UK. Today, there are over 130 whiskey distilleries in Scotland. Over a billion bottles are shipped around the world every year. Capacity has increased by 60% in the last decade to over 380 million liters of alcohol. And now there are distilleries all around the world making their own expression of pot still single malt whiskey in countries like Japan, Canada, South Africa, the US, England, India, Taiwan, Australia, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, and the Netherlands. And with the age of the internet, it's never been a better time to explore more, to learn more, and to start your journey into whiskey. So this video took quite a long time to make, and it's not really feasible, but I wanted to make more videos like this. So I've actually started a Patreon where you can go and support me to create more videos like this and dedicate more of my time to making videos like this. And also on Patreon, I'll be sharing more live streams. I'll be sharing specific reviews on whiskey bottles that I like. So yeah, jump over there, go have a look, see if you want to support. Don't have to, totally up to you. But also as well, I'm now releasing merch like this one, Share and Enjoy, which is a Firstfield whiskey t-shirt. This is the 2021 vintage. There's heaps of other t-shirts on there. So it'd be great if you go check out that as well on Etsy. But also, if you really enjoyed this kind of more deep dive type of video, maybe you want me to do one on maybe the history of bourbon or the history of Irish whiskey, let me know in the comments. I'd be keen to know if you're sort of interested in this type of thing. But above all, make sure you share and enjoy. Beauty.